Coastal Hadhrami Arabic intensive verb patterns : an optimality theoretic analysis

Abstract EN

Based on the Optimality Theory (OT), this research investigates morphologically the intensive verb patterns in Coastal Hadhrami Arabic collecting their data from Mukalla and shihr only.

It has been found that a set of markedness and faithfulness constraints interact to assign the intensive verbal configurations of CHA: syllable structure constraints and alignment constraints.

The analysis shows that nearly all the stems of CHA intensive verbs are completely different from their equivalent intensive verbs in Standard Arabic.

As they are commonly derived verbs their analysis depends mostly on Reduplication Theory in which the alignment constraints modify the prosodic structure of the verb either by changing the vocalic pattern or by affixation.